The Con Man Read online

  “I think I shall be able to manage it all right,” said Guinan with a confident smile.

  “Well, that’s your business.” Mr Levenstein went on sketching his plan. “Beyond the door is the laboratory and printing-room. The safe is here.” He marked the position with a rough square. “This door leads from the laboratory to the stock-room, and this other one to the cutting-room. The fire escape runs up the back of the building here to a door which opens into the laboratory secured by a panic-bolt. Is that clear?”

  “Clear as daylight,” said Lefty Guinan. “There’s a night-watchman, of course?”

  “There are two,” said Mr Levenstein. “You’ll have to deal with them, but don’t go too far if you can avoid it.”

  “Trust me.” Guinan winked. “I cut my eye-teeth in this game, mister.”

  He picked up the rough plan that Mr Levenstein had drawn, folded it and put it in his pocket.

  “One last question,” he said. “When do you want us to go after this film?”

  “I’ll let you know that,” answered Mr Levenstein. “At the present moment they’re shooting the final scene. Where are you staying?”

  “We haven’t fixed anywhere yet,” said Lefty Guinan. “I don’t know this burg at all. I thought perhaps you’d be able to recommend somewhere.”

  Mr Levenstein thought for a moment.

  “You’d better stay at Macks,” he said. “It’s a little hotel-restaurant just outside Los Angeles. Not a pretentious place, but quite comfortable.”

  “Then I think we’ll get along there now,” said Lefty Guinan, glancing at his watch. “I’ll call you up in the morning and let you know if we’re fixed there, and you can send the cash along.”

  “You’ll get it before the evening,” said Mr Levenstein, and his tone suggested that the interview was over.

  Lefty Guinan and the silent Spike Munro took their leave, and for a long time after they had gone, Mr Levenstein sat on his flabby, unpleasant-looking face, a complacent smile.

  *

  The smile would not have been so complacent if he could have heard the conversation between the two men who had just left him. Until halfway along the Wilshire Boulevard neither of them had spoken, then it was Lefty Guinan who broke the silence.

  “I see stacks of bucks ahead,” he said softly.

  Mr Munro grunted.

  “Fifty thousand dollars is a lot, but I wouldn’t call it stacks,” he growled.

  “I wasn’t thinking of fifty thousand dollars,” replied Lefty Guinan. “Handled properly, there’s more in it for us than that, Spike.” Spike looked up at his companion.

  “Spill it,” he said briefly.

  “If this fellow Levenstein is willing to pay fifty thousand dollars to us to pinch him that film,” said Mr Guinan slowly, “how much do you suppose the Mammoth Picture Corporation Inc. would pay us to get it back again?”

  Mr Munro stopped dead.

  “Lefty,” he said, and there was admiration in his hoarse voice, “you’ve got a brain!”

  “Brains are my speciality,” retorted the gratified Mr Guinan. “We’re goin’ to clear up a lot of money, Spike, on this deal — a lot of money.”

  Curiously enough, at that moment Mr Thomas Spearman, lying at ease between the soft sheets in his comfortable bed at the Beverley Wilshire, was thinking exactly the same thing.

  Chapter 4

  THE QUARREL

  In any other city than Hollywood, Mary Henley would have attracted a second glance. In that centre of feminine loveliness, however, she was just a beautiful girl among many others. She was slim and fair with the creamy-rose complexion that goes with natural fairness, for neither Mary’s complexion nor her hair owed anything to artifice. As she sat at a small table in one of the cheaper restaurants she offered a striking contrast to her companion. Irene Claremont was beautiful, too, but it was a dark beauty, and the redness of her lips came from a small tube that she carried in her handbag, and her dead white skin could be purchased at two and sixpence a bottle.

  “I heard they wanted somebody my type,” said Mary, dropping the match with which she had just lit her cigarette into her saucer, and addressing the man who sat opposite to her. “I was at the studio directly it opened in the morning, but do you know there were already crowds of girls waiting and the man at the door told me they had fixed.”

  Dick Rennit nodded sympathetically.

  “I know,” he said. “The first breath of a job and there’s always thousands buzzing round, like flies round a jam pot.”

  “The unemployment’s terrible,” murmured Irene. “Simply terrible. Thousands of ‘extras’ are literally starving.”

  “We’re not far off it, my dear,” said Mary with a grimace. “I must get a job somewhere; I’ve only got two dollars in the world.”

  On the strength of winning a beauty competition arranged by a London daily she had come to Hollywood eighteen months previously, full of hope and ambition — and seventy-five pounds. The hope and ambition still remained.

  “The place is overcrowded, that’s the trouble,” said Dick Rennit, who gained a precarious livelihood by doing any and every job that happened to be going. “People flock to Hollywood full of the glamour and fame, and an easy living. More illusions must have been killed here than in any other place on the earth.”

  “Well, I’m going after a job as a waitress this afternoon,” declared Mary Henley. “One of the girls at the Brown Derby was telling me that there was a vacancy.”

  “You’d better keep it to yourself,” warned Irene. “If it leaks out the place will be besieged before you can get there.”

  There was a little silence, and then Dick said suddenly:

  “How was it you didn’t get into Mammoth Pictures’ latest? I thought Lamont was going to fix it?”

  Mary reddened, and Irene noticing the flush looked at her sharply.

  “He was,” she said hesitantly, “but, well, the conditions made it impossible for me to accept.”

  “Oh, I see,” Dick nodded understandingly. “Like that was it? Lamont’s got a reputation for that sort of thing.”

  “He — he — was beastly,” said Mary angrily.

  “Try to pull over the love stuff, did he?” said Irene. “He’s like that, tried it with me once.”

  “And you fell,” said Dick with a chuckle. “Six months ago you were crackers about him.”

  Irene frowned.

  “I was nothing of the sort,” she declared. “I strung him along because I thought he might be useful, and he was. He got me one or two good parts.”

  “He’s got a lot of influence with Myers,” said Dick.

  “He’s acknowledged to be one of the best film editors and cutters in the place.”

  “He may be all that, but I think he’s horrible,” said Mary.

  “He’s like a great many of the men round here — or anywhere else for that matter,” said Dick. “He takes advantage of his position.” He finished his coffee and pushed aside the empty cup. “What are you girls going to do now?” he asked.

  Irene shrugged her shapely shoulders.

  “I’m going over to see Landser at R.L.A.,” she said. “They’re casting for a new picture and he promised me if there was anything going he would try to get me in.”

  “I’m not doing anything until this afternoon,” said Mary. “Why?”

  “I feel like a walk,” replied Dick, “and I hate walking alone.”

  “I’ll come with you,” said the girl. “I feel like a walk too.”

  “Go on, then, you two.” Irene searched in her bag for a cigarette. “I’ll stop here for a minute or two, I think.”

  Dick rose and called the waitress. His forlorn hope that he might get Mary to himself had come off and he was feeling stupidly elated. He paid the small bill and left the little restaurant with Mary. They negotiated several small streets, chattering about everything and nothing, and presently came out on the Sunset Boulevard, the most wonderful street in the world. A distinguished-
looking man who was strolling along towards them glanced twice at Mary, and even after he had passed took the trouble to look back. Mr Thomas Spearman had an eye for beauty, particularly when it was feminine beauty, and the girl’s face and figure pleased him. Quite three minutes after she had passed out of sight he speculated as to who she was, and then reverted to the thoughts that her appearance had interrupted.

  There is no woman living who does not know when she has made an impression on a man, and very few to whom the knowledge fails to impart a pleasant sense of conquest. Mary Henley was no exception, and she mentally noted the admiring glance of the good-looking stranger and was secretly pleased. Dick had noticed it too.

  “Who was that fellow?” he asked.

  The girl shook her head. She’d been wondering that herself.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I’ve never seen him before.”

  “He stared hard enough,” said Dick. “I thought he knew you.”

  “I think he’d like to know me,” said Mary calmly, “but at the present moment we are not acquainted.”

  Dick changed the subject, and in the interest of the ensuing conversation — a conversation that need not be recorded, since it was entirely of a personal nature — Mr Spearman was forgotten.

  And yet that chance meeting by two people entirely unknown to each other was to have an effect on both their lives. For in that momentary intermingling of glances something had been born which was to justify Mr Spearman’s existence and raise him into the sphere of the immortals.

  Dick Rennit left Mary Henley at three o’clock and walked back to his small hotel treading on air. During that stroll with the girl, he had succeeded in putting into words a great deal that had been locked up in his mind for the past three months, and he had found a willing — almost an eager — listener. That she had listened at all had given him cause for wonderment, but that she should have reciprocated by doing a little pleasant talking on her own account filled him with surprised ecstasy. The clear air of California seemed clearer; the sunshine more potent, the surroundings more lovely on account of those few words the girl had so softly and shyly uttered. Dick was hurrying along lost in speculations regarding the future, so oblivious to his immediate surroundings that he bumped into the man who was coming in the opposite direction.

  “Say, what the hell’s the matter with you?” grunted a voice angrily, and Dick was jerked back to the present.

  “I’m sorry,” he stammered feebly, for the impact had winded him. “I’m awfully — Why, it’s Lamont!”

  Perry Lamont glared at him.

  “Why don’t you look where you’re going?” he demanded.

  “I was thinking about something else,” said Dick. “I hope I didn’t hurt you.”

  “You’ve given me an infernal kick on the shin,” grumbled the other, and then as Dick apologised and would have continued on his way: “Don’t go, Rennit; you’re just the guy I’m looking for.”

  “What is it?” said Dick. “Have you got a job for me?”

  Lamont’s dark foreign-looking face broke into a smile — a peculiar smile that was not altogether pleasant. “I may have — if you’re sensible,” he replied meaningfully. “Let’s walk a bit.”

  He took the younger man’s arm, and Dick in frowning astonishment waited for what was corning next.

  “I like you, Rennit,” went on Lamont, “and I might be able to put something good in your way — if you’re willing to do a little favour for me.”

  His manner was graciousness itself, and Dick, who knew his man rather well, shot him a suspicious glance.

  “It all depends about the favour,” he replied rather shortly.

  “Quite an easy one,” said Lamont smoothly. “You know that little blonde, Mary Henley?”

  Dick felt the blood mounting to his face.

  “Yes, I know her,” he said quietly. “Why?”

  “Well, I wish you’d get her to be a bit nicer to me,” said the other. “I could do quite a lot for her if she’d treat me right, but the little fool’s scared or something.”

  Dick’s mouth compressed, but he said nothing.

  “The last time I saw her I asked her to come along to a bit of supper at my place,” said Lamont. “She refused — quite angry about it she was too. Now you know her quite well, what about bringing her along tomorrow night? You could come with her and halfway through the supper have a telephone message or something calling you away.” He glanced at Dick with an ugly leer. “What do you say about it?”

  “I’ll tell you,” said Dick hotly. “I think you’re a dirty swine!”

  Lamont’s dark eyes flashed.

  “There’s no need to get all lit up with cheap heroics,” he sneered, “What are you making such a fuss for? I dare say the girl has been to any number of tête-à-tête supper parties — ”

  “That’s a lie!” Dick’s right arm shot out and his clenched fist thudded on the other’s square jaw.

  Lamont staggered, lost his balance, and fell sprawling on to the sidewalk. A little knot of passers-by who had seen the blow gathered round interestedly. Dick had acted in the heat of the moment, and now he felt a little ashamed of himself. Lamont, his face set in a scowl of fury, got slowly to his feet.

  “I’ll remember this, Rennit,” he breathed as he dusted himself down. “I don’t forget easily.”

  “You can remember it as long as you like,” said Dick, “and I’ll give you something else to remember. Stop annoying Miss Henley, or the next time I shall do something worse than knocking you down.”

  He turned on his heel and walked rapidly away. Lamont, with a furious glare at the people who had stopped, pushed his way angrily through them and stalked off in the opposite direction.

  The small audience quickly broke up and went about their various businesses, quickly forgetting the incident. A week later, however, at least one of their number was to remember it very vividly indeed.

  Chapter 5

  INTRODUCING MR PAUL RIVINGTON

  Nobody meeting Paul Rivington for the first time would ever have believed that he had once walked a beat as a uniformed policeman. Yet this was true, and his promotion had been amazingly rapid. Two years after he had first joined the Metropolitan Police Force he was a sergeant, and eighteen months after that had risen to an acting inspectorship in the C.I.D. He was liked by everybody, from the chief-commissioner to the youngest constable, and had been earmarked for further promotion, when, to the amazement of his superiors and friends, he had abruptly resigned. The excuse he gave was that he had taken up police work for a hobby, and that now he had acquired a sufficient knowledge of it he intended to devote himself to the examination of foreign police methods and the fascinating study of criminology.

  He could afford to do this, for he had an income of six thousand a year, and was therefore not dependent on his pay or the pension which his resignation had lost him. He wanted more freedom than was possible under the administration at the Yard. As his own master he was able to undertake only that work which interested him. And it was not long before he had established a reputation for himself. Scotland Yard is a very jealous and a very loyal institution. It looks askance at the outsider and turns a freezing stare at the enthusiastic amateur.

  But Paul Rivington had left the Yard with the good wishes of everyone, and was always ready to help the official police if he could. When Scotland Yard was at its wits’ ends over the Danebridge murders he was called in by the assistant commissioner and worked with an official status. When he had justified this unusual procedure by bringing the case to a successful conclusion it had become quite a habit for headquarters to consult him in cases where especial difficulties confronted the patient investigators. Paul Rivington was nearing fifty, a tall man with a clean-cut face that was rather stern except for the humorous twinkle in the grey eyes. His hair was dark and flecked with grey at the temples, and he was clean-shaven except for the tiny moustache which lay about the firm mouth, a smear of black over the tight, straight
lips. He had never married, although at one period of his life he had vague ideas of doing so, and expended most of his affection on his younger brother.

  Bob Rivington was fifteen years his junior, and as unlike him in outward appearance as it is possible for two men to be. Bob was short and inclined to stoutness, with a round, cheerful face and mouse-coloured hair. He was devoted to the elder man, and acted in the capacity of an unofficial secretary. They lived in a big house overlooking Hampstead Heath, a house that had been acquired by Paul Rivington’s grandfather, and in which both he and his brother had been born.

  For several days Paul had been a little irritable. Bob, who from long association knew his brother’s every mood, did not have to look far for the reason. For the past month or so things had been very quiet. There was nothing in the newspapers of interest, and Paul, who liked nothing better than working at high pressure, had begun to weary of the inaction. Crime — or at least the kind of crime that interested him — seemed to have come to a sudden standstill. There were a few petty robberies and a smash-and-grab raid, but nothing that was not ordinary and commonplace. Bob was beginning to wonder how long this slump was going to last when he came back from a walk to find the whole atmosphere changed. His brother was seated at his desk busily writing, and about him was an air of alertness that was very different from the mood in which Bob had left him. He greeted his brother with a smile.

  “How would you like a trip to Hollywood?” he asked, his eyes twinkling.

  “Hollywood?” gasped Bob, taken completely by surprise.

  Paul nodded.

  “Hollywood, in California,” he explained, “where the films are made, and most of the inhabitants apparently worship English policemen!”